Harold Starr was born on September 8,1914. He was the fifth of six children born to Ellen and Morley Starr. He grew up in the Central Temperance Hotel in Regent Street (now the site of the Savoy – there are blue plaques there commemorating the Starr Brothers) where his mother was proprietor and his father worked as as shop fitter.
Swindon remembers Harold Starr.
Born: 8th September 1914. Died: 31st August 1940. Killed by enemy fire after bailing out of his stricken aircraft only a few days before his 26th birthday: one of The Few.
Gosh. I can’t believe it’s been so long. But you all know how it is listeners. Life, business, etc – it all gets in the way sometimes. Gah! Anyway here we are the Richard Jefferies Old Town walk part 2.
Back in March – blimey – I published part one of two planned posts about the Richard Jefferies Old Town walk.
23rd March 2015 Richard Jefferies Old Town walk Part 1 Oh listeners, I do love a bit of urban discovery. As is evidenced with my travelogue on the West Swindon sculpture trail. And the subject of this post turned out to offer some nuggets of urban discovery.When I say...
David Bent: choosing Swindon
Long time and regular listeners will know that when I first began this blog I conceived my personal list of ‘Ten things to celebrate about Swindon’.
I’m actually not at all sure I ever got that list finished – so much is there here in Swindon that is blog worthy.
Ralph Bates Civil War Chronicler
Some time ago, in the tourist information centre in Bristol, I saw an information sheet on a literary trail round the city. And that got me thinking that Swindon could surely have such a thing here what with Richard Jefferies and Alfred Williams – neither of whom I knew much about until recently. No sooner had I had this thought than, in one of those curious coincidences that punctuate our lives, what should appear on my social media stream than a piece from the Swindon Link magazine publicizing a forthcoming talk at the Museum and Art Gallery about Ralph Bates. No – I’d not heard of him either. And in his day he was rated as better than Hemingway. Who knew?
We are most of us familiar with the 7 wonders of the ancient world:
1.The great pyramid of Egypt
2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. The statue of Zeus at Olympia
4. That well-known temple of Artemis at Ephesus
5. One mausoleum at Halicarnassus
6. Rhode’s Colossus …
7. .. and the lighthouse of Alexandria.
Only one of which – the pyramid – still remains.
My recent post about the Richard Jefferies museum at Coate, Swindon has prompted a reader of this blog to share with us his memories of his secondary school which was named after the eponymous writer.
John Richard Jefferies (1848-1887): is best known for his prolific and sensitive writing on natural history, rural life and agriculture in late Victorian England.
Ken White – Swindon’s Mural Man. Known and loved by many Swindonians for the murals that once were scattered across the town. Only one now remains, and that’s his first one, the Golden Lion Bridge mural.
Right then, hands up. Who knew there was such an entity as the West Swindon sculpture walk? No? Me neither.
I only discovered it when rooting about the interweb for info for this blog. In the course of my research I came across this information and map of the trail. How interesting I thought. And how cool it would be to do the walk and see how many of them still exist and write about it. So this is WSC Part 1: Diana Dors.
